“You are the same today as you’ll be in five years except for two things, the books you read and the people you meet.” — Charlie “Tremendous” Jones
You may not know about Charlie “Tremendous” Jones.
A lot of people, sadly, go through life that way.
And others of us who’ve met him, don’t remember him as often as we ought.
Charlie was a great motivational speaker and a wonderful Christian. He also worked hard at getting people to think and he’d use laughter to that end.
He’d speak for someone and he say, about the person who’d invited him: “there is nothing I wouldn’t do for him and there is nothing he wouldn’t do for me and we go around doing nothing for each other.”
Charlie made a point of hugging men and kissing ladies’ hands.
He would say the hardest thing about hugging men was getting them to stand still for it.
He also told of an elderly man who once thanked him for his hug, and then told Charlie that he’d never married, never had children, lived his adult life alone. This fellow in his 80s told Charlie the last time he’d been hugged was before his mother died, some 60 years prior.
Now, in New Jersey, they are passing rules against hugging.
This past week it made the news that Matawan-Aberdeen Middle School made hugs against the rules because of unsuitable physical interactions — what ever those may be.
Presumably groping, tonsil-hockey, and other common forms of adolescent self expression are also against the rules.
The school officials are saying they need to teach students about “appropriate interactions.”
Let’s hope they do.
Sure. We all get it. Kids need to be safe for good touch and safe from bad touch. And rules are rules.
But isn’t it a sad world when we have to outlaw hugs?
Charlie went to a better place a few years back.
We are left here to figure out how to sneak a hug in once in a while — while there’s still time.
— Chuck Smith